43. Chapter 43
AMARIA
The King didn't lock me in my room.
He did something worse. He gave me a front-row seat. He made me sit in the garden pavilion with a cup of tea I didn't want and a clear view of the eastern lawn where the rehearsal would take place.
"You should see this," he'd said, his tone pleasant. "It will help you understand why your cooperation matters. Why the realm needs this union."
My Suppressor stood behind me. Two guards flanked the pavilion entrance. And in front of me, stretching across the manicured grounds, was a section of garden that made my chest ache.
The Veil sickness had reached even here.
A perfect circle of death in the center of the royal lawn.
Roses turned to grey husks. Grass withered to ash.
A fountain that had stopped flowing, its water turned brackish and still.
The blight spread outward in tendrils, creeping toward the healthy hedges with its hungry poison.
Every dead flower felt like an accusation. Every inch of grey, a verdict.
Servants had set up a small staging area at the edge of the blight. Cushioned chairs for the observers—a handful of court officials, the King himself, and me in my grey wool, watching from twenty feet away like the afterthought I was.
Then they arrived.
Eryndor walked onto the lawn with Vivienne on his arm.
She was radiant. Again. Still. That white silk, threaded with gold that caught the morning sun. Her dark hair was loose around her shoulders, and she was laughing at something he'd said, her hand resting on his forearm with easy familiarity.
He looked... fine.
It didn’t look wrong to see him beside her—it looked right.
The posture. The easy stride. The way his body knew how to perform this without being taught.
I'd seen him fight like a god and bleed like a martyr, but this—the prince on the lawn with the princess on his arm—this was the version of him that didn't need me to exist.
They stopped at the edge of the dying garden. Vivienne surveyed the damage with a small frown.
"It's worse than I expected," she said. Her voice carried across the lawn—carefully sympathetic. "The sickness runs deep."
"The Nullatheon tore through here last month." The King had risen from his chair, moving to stand near them. "If your Marks can heal this, the people will know the union is blessed."
Vivienne nodded. She turned to Eryndor, her amber eyes warm.
"Ready?"
He nodded. His face revealed nothing.
They stepped into the circle of death together.
Through the tether, I felt the moment their magic touched.
Eryndor's Soulbinder Mark flared first—I knew the sensation, had felt it a hundred times, how it pulled, looking for something to latch onto. The way it sought connection, amplification, partnership.
Then Vivienne's Absolution Mark answered.
Light bloomed between their joined hands. Golden, warm, spreading outward in ripples that made the air shimmer. It poured into the dead earth like water into an arid desert, seeping down, down, finding every withered root and grey stem.
The tether hummed.
And I felt... nothing.
No burning. No warping reality. No sense of becoming a weapon, of nuclear heat building between two powder kegs. Just smooth, easy harmony. Two marks working together like they were designed to.
Safe, I thought. It feels safe.
The grass began to green.
I watched it happen in real time—grey blades flushing with color, standing upright, reaching toward the sun. The roses shuddered. One unfurled a single red petal, then another, then a full bloom bursting from what had been a dead husk.
The fountain gurgled. Clear water bubbled up from somewhere deep, spilling over the basin's edge, washing away the brackish film.
Their Marks combined—his Soul Binder, her Absolution Mark—will bring the healing our people so desperately need.
The King's words echoed through my skull.
He wasn't wrong.
The whole point of arranged royal marriages. Complementary marks. Healing together what neither could alone. I knew the logic. Logic I could argue with. Evidence I couldn't.
This is what he's supposed to have, I thought. She gives him green grass and red roses. I give him exploding wine glasses and a world that warps when we stand too close.
I set down my teacup. My hands were shaking.
The rehearsal ended, the golden light fading as their hands separated.
Vivienne released Eryndor's hands, beaming. Where there had been death, there was now a circle of green. Where there had been rot, there was bloom.
"Perfect," the King said. He was smiling—a real smile, the first I'd seen from him. "The ceremony tomorrow will be magnificent."
A servant appeared with a tray. Two crystal flutes of champagne, pale gold, catching the light. Vivienne took hers with a laugh, lifting it high.
"To healing," she said, and turned to Eryndor with that warm, radiant smile. "To us."
She clinked her glass against his and drank. Then she rose on her toes and brushed a kiss to his cheek.
His glass exploded.
The crystal bursting in his grip, champagne and blood running together down his fingers. A shard embedded in the meat of his palm. He didn't flinch. Didn't look down.
The garden went quiet.
Vivienne stepped back, her smile frozen, champagne still wet on her lips. The King's expression didn't change, but his eyes moved—to Eryndor's hand, to the blood, to whatever was locked behind his son's face.
"Apologies." Eryndor's voice was level. Polished. "The crystal was thin."
The crystal had not been thin.
Through the tether, I caught what his face wouldn't show. A single pulse, hot and compressed and strangled before it could reach the surface. The feeling of her mouth on his skin and every part of him recoiling.
A servant rushed forward with a cloth. Eryndor wrapped his bleeding hand without looking at it. Vivienne recovered her composure, laughing it off with a grace that was either genuine or expertly rehearsed.
But his gaze lifted toward the pavilion. Found me.
His hand was still bleeding through the cloth. He didn't seem to notice.
I should have felt vindicated. Some feral, possessive part of me wanted to—wanted to bare my teeth at the princess with champagne on her lips and say he's mine, his body knows it even if his mouth won't say it.
But his hand was still bleeding into the cloth.
And the garden was still green. And the truth sat between those two facts like a blade balanced on its point: his body rejected her, but the world needed him not to.
The kingdom needed the green grass. The people needed the healing.
And what his skin wanted when she touched him didn't change that.
Footsteps sounded behind me on the pavilion stones. The King's shadow fell across my untouched tea.
"You see now," he said quietly. "What they can do together. What the realm needs."
I didn't answer.
"The ceremony tomorrow will be public. The whole kingdom will watch their prince heal the land with his perfect bride." He paused. "You will attend, of course. To ease the tether's strain."
To twist the knife.
"I understand."
The King smiled.
"I knew you would."
He walked away. I watched him go and let myself imagine, just for a moment, what it would feel like to bury my blade in his back.
The roses swayed in the breeze.
They really were beautiful. I wondered how long it would take me to burn them down.